Google unveiled a huge redesign of Google Earth. The changes include being now completely browser-based, letting you see the world in 3-D, and providing guided “Voyager” tours. You can read more about the changes at:

The Atlantic unveiled the “Life Timeline” interactive. Use a “drop-and-drag” menu to input your birthday, and it will deliver a visually engaging history of the key events that have happened during your lifetime. The timeline includes political, cultural, technological and other kinds of developments, along with an intriguing short summary. You can read more about the Life Timeline tool here. As we all know, teenagers love to talk and write about themselves, and this tool could be an intriguing personal hook to connect with history. It doesn’t really fit into The Best “Today In History” Sites list, but I can’t think of a better place to put it.

Kathryn Schulz published an excellent analysis and guide for effective ways to communicate with your congressperson in The New Yorker – What Calling Congress Achieves. I wouldn’t use the whole piece in class, but excerpts would be very engaging.

GlobalXplorer is a crowdsourced tool supported by TED that lets users search satellite imagery for signs of looting so that archaeological sites can be saved. The first country they are searching is Peru. It seems like it would be an excellent student project – the geographic “tiles” that are searched don’t seem too big, the “training” required (watching a short video) seems pretty easy, and the supplemental materials from National Geographic about Peru are ideal for Geography class. You can read more about the project at TED. In many ways, the project is similar to Zooniverse, another crowdsourced site for “citizen” science and social science projects (see “Zooniverse” Is One Of The Coolest Ed Sites On The Web – I Can’t Believe I’m Just Hearing About It!).